A Hit Song on YouTube, Unnameable on the Radio

A popular Cee Lo Green song:

THERE is a world where when you see someone driving in a fancy car with the girl you love, you shout out, “Forget you!” It’s the same world where friends will talk smack about the crazy stuff their dads say.

That world is called traditional entertainment.

And while traditional entertainment increasingly relies on the anything-goes Internet to cultivate and stoke interest in music, TV shows and movies, there are still some important boundaries. The return to civilization comes at a cost.

A case in point is a recent viral musical sensation — a bouncy song by the soul-pop singer Cee Lo Green with over three million views on YouTube in little more than a week. The singer is peeved at a girl who has left him and concludes that “If I’d been richer, I’d still be with ya” and though “there’s pain in my chest, I still wish you the best ...” followed by a certain crude phrase, and an “ooh, ooh, ooh.”

This is hardly a fleeting expletive of the kind the Federal Communications Commission has tried to regulate...

Read the NYT article here.